Short stories can be just as funny as novels. The difference in length doesn’t influence the humour, other than to pack it into fewer words and thereby making it quicker to read. So quite often, shorter really is better. Short stories also have a relation to time and place, and those written during the first half of 20th century in the United States have a flavour all of their own.
The Ransom of Red Chief (1907) by O. Henry (a pseudonym of William Sydney Porter), The Golden Honeymoon (1922) by Ring Lardner, The Waltz (1933) by Dorothy Parker and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939) by James Thurber are all closely identified with their place and time. In a regular feature of written humour, self-deception plays a leading role in the stories.
While some forms of humour do not stand the test of time, The Ransom of Red Chief remains funny after more than a century. The story follows two small-time crooks who kidnap a child thinking they can ransom him and extract some money from the boy’s rich father. But somehow they themselves end up paying a ransom to get rid of the child, who has turned out to be more than they can handle. The story’s humour could be the timeless quality of a child misbehaving, but it could also be due to the way in which the crooked protagonists imagining they can succeed when they are not equipped to do so is presented by the author.
The premise of the story that crime doesn’t pay has become a standard in comic situations. Hailed as America’s answer to Guy de Maupassant, O. Henry explored themes that focused on ordinary people and centred around the tensions found in society and class in early 20th century America.
The Golden Honeymoon by Ring Lardner (1922) has the first-person narrator telling the story of him and his wife taking a holiday to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. Using techniques such as incorrect grammar, calling his wife ‘mother’ and harping on the perceived social standing of Rotarians, Lardner immediately places the narrator in small-town America. The lightly humorous story develops as the honeymooning pair meet another couple, one of whom was engaged to the narrator’s wife fifty years ago. The jealousies and competitiveness that ensue create humorous situations that reinforce the characters’ social and marital positions.
Lardner, perhaps best known as a weekly columnist and sportswriter, wrote poetry and short stories in the time of the Jazz age. He was a friend of F. Scott Fitzgerald but the characters and settings of Lardner’s writing were different to Fitzgerald’s, and he often based his short stories around fictional sports situations.
In her story The Waltz, Dorothy Parker illustrates a different section of American society and moves closer to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s depiction of the Jazz Age. Also using a first-person narrator, the story shows the difference between the internal thoughts and external behaviour of a woman who dances with a man she does not admire. Themes of the story that permeate the situation encompass identity, independence and conformity for the woman, and for the male character possibly self-deception.
Whether or not the reader actually finds the story funny, regardless of the acute observation and tension in the situation, will depend upon the individual reader’s sense of humour. Having been described as ‘arguably the first female celebrity wit since the 17th century’, Parker does not abandon her penchant for witty quotes in the story, with the line ‘Trapped like a trap in a trap’ becoming a metaphor to some for social inequality.
James Thurber, an American author and cartoonist, wrote The Secret Life of Walter Mitty just before the outbreak of World War II. The story follows the actions and imaginings of a mild and ineffectual man who has driven into town with his wife for their regular shopping expedition. Triggered by slight incidents in his own ordinary situation, Walter Mitty’s imaginings encompass extraordinary adventures in which he takes the role of hero. In the last episode he has himself about to face the firing squad, ‘inscrutable to the last’, when in reality he is just leaning against a wall smoking.
As the best-known of Thurber’s short stories, it has led to the name ‘Walter Mitty’ and the derivative word ‘Mittyesque’ becoming part of the English language, depicting a person who spends more time in escapist daydreaming than engaging with the real world. It has twice been made into a film, neither particularly faithful to the original story but both using the premise of the word ‘Mittyesque’.
The four stories come from a similar time and place but employ very different kinds of humour. Taken together, they display the skill required by the format and the ways in which the development of character in relation to theme can work together to create memorable and funny short stories.
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Authors
O. Henry, Ring Lardner, Dorothy Parker, James Thurber, Guy de Maupassant, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Titles
The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry, The Golden Honeymoon by Ring Lardner, The Waltzby Dorothy Parker, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty by James Thurber
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